


Saturate

by museicalitea



Series: When The Game's Been Fought [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: BokuAka Week 2016, Gen, Post-Nationals, Rain, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: Two weeks ago, Fukurodani lost at Nationals. No one on the team handled it very well.Keiji, contrary to everything he says, and everything he tries to do to get over it, is still no exception.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up of sorts to [another sunny day](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4533546), which you don't have to read first, but you may like to! If you're impatient and want a (very brief) summary, it's about Fukurodani losing by a hair's breath in the semi-finals of Nationals, and it's from Konoha's point-of-view.
> 
> Written (a bit late) for BokuAka Week 2016, Day 3: Rain (and it fits in too with Day 5: After Practice/Game).

Outside the gym was the sort of weather that made one regret leaving their warm bed and cozy pyjamas. The rain was pelting down in a fury: sharp whipcracks like stones clattering on the gym roof, overshaken soda rivulets gushing down the pipelines, the shhhes and chhes of raw rice cresting the concrete outside and wow, Keiji was really hungry. And cold. And so, so inexplicably _mad_.

He had nothing to be mad about.

 _Nationals,_ a little voice in the back of his head told him (a voice that sounded suspiciously like the one he used when Bokuto was being a penance).

 _No,_ he told that little voice firmly. Nationals had been two weeks ago. It had happened, and it was over, and he needed to concentrate on practice.

But the gym felt very big and hollow. Everyone was doing drills as instructed, but there was nothing in it. No one was shouting. No one was laughing. The coach hadn’t had to blow the whistle for noise control once.

“Akaashi!”

He jolted out of his reverie too late, and only just got his arms up in time to block the ball hitting him in the face. It rebounded towards the wall, and Izumi—libero, 169 centimetres tall, fit but only averagely fast—dived towards it. He missed, and Keiji had to chew his lip from the inside to stop a frustrated growl rising in his throat.

Frustration not towards Izumi, but it might be misconstrued as such.

“Oi, _captain_ , head outta the clouds!” Minami called. “Weren’t you the one telling everyone else to concentrate earlier?”

_Captain._

The third years hadn't officially retired from the club yet, even though they were long gone in all but technicalities. And until that day came where they had the official handing-over, that title belonged to someone else; someone else who deserved it far more right now, even if his absence in the gym was so out-of-place and irreconcilable that Keiji kept glancing over his shoulder in baseless reaction and preparing to raise his voice or send his toss to someone it was hard to forget wouldn't be there.

And Minami didn't have to rub it in like that at all. Keiji opened his mouth to retort, thought better of it—no need for Yamiji to tell him off so close to the end of practice if his words came out venomous—and lowered himself into receiving stance.

“One more!”

♠

Keiji took his time over changing after practice. He had to lock up anyway, and a great sense of lethargy had overcome him since leaving the gym. He wondered, briefly, if it was anaemia playing up again; but no, he was still taking iron tablets and his most recent test results had showed normal iron levels. And he doubted it was the school day or practice taking a toll on him; neither had been taxing enough.

He just felt… heavy. Like there were lead weights tied to his shoulders and thighs, and someone had drained all the blood from his veins and replaced it with wet sand. And as he sat on a bench, pretending to be distracted by his phone and the last onigiri in his bag, he found that try as he might to think beyond how exhausted he was, his brain was fogged. He couldn’t make thoughts form beyond skeletal ideas half-hidden from him, and in the end, he gave up on it.

Fortunately, there were only three people left in the changing room by the time he came to that conclusion, and he managed to dress himself and get his bag packed by the time the door swung shut behind the last person.

When he left the gym foyer after checking all the doors were locked, it was completely dark, and through the rain, the streetlights seemed to expand and flicker with their glow. With puddles like onyx rippling across the paths, and raindrops like crystals flecking every window in sight and twisting down from the eaves, it was an artist’s paradise. The sort of thing he’d love to photograph, on any other day.

Except, unfortunately, he had to walk to the train station through it.

Even though he had an umbrella, which kept the worst of the rain away, the hems of his trackpants and his trainers were soaked through before he had even left the school campus, and Keiji couldn’t keep the scowl off his face. He already had homework and a revision timetable he was behind on. Drying his shoes and remembering about laundry was the last thing he wanted to do tonight.

And thinking at all, especially about the things he didn’t want to do, was sending him dangerously close to dwelling on Nationals. And he couldn’t afford to do that. Not now that it was long over, and he had more important things to be concentrating on.

Then, lost in thought, and with his eyes trained on the ground as he pushed through the rain gusting towards his face, Keiji didn’t notice the person dashing out of the combini until they had crashed into him and knocked him to his knees.

It jarred, but it didn’t hurt. And then, as Keiji got his bearings again and took in that someone had just barrelled him over on the street, he realised that his umbrella was in front of him, and that he was kneeling in a puddle. He was about to look up, about to snap at the person because this was the _last_ thing he needed—

“Akaashi!”

His heart caught in his throat.

It was Bokuto, standing there with no raincoat, bag slung across his chest instead of his forehead, and looking just as shocked as Keiji felt.

“Bokuto-san—”

“Ah, ahhhh, I’m sorry! Argh, I didn’t see you—are you okay?” Before Keiji even had a chance to process anything Bokuto had said—in fairness, not much—Bokuto crouched down and started darting his head and hands around, looking Keiji over with a working mouth and distressed eyes. “Ah, no, you’re all wet…”

Normally, Keiji would have given him a tongue-lashing, or just sighed and walked away already. He would have done the same for anyone else who was that careless.

Yet his first thought had not been _Bokuto-san-is-distracted-start-figuring-out-the-cause-and-which-list-it-fits-into_ ; but rather, some wordless, startled realisation that it was Bokuto, who still looked the same, and whom he hadn’t seen in twelve days.

(And immediately, he made the mental amendment: he had seen him, but not _experienced_ him, and for those events to not be correlated was rare indeed.)

“Be more careful where you’re walking, Bokuto-san,” Keiji said, and with a sigh, he looked Bokuto in the eye, and held out his hand. “I was already getting wet, this hasn’t made much difference.”

Bokuto looked conflicted as he clasped Keiji’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

“You weren’t _that_ wet, were ya? ‘Cause you had an umbrella—I forgot to text you this morning and ask if you thought I needed one—”

Which was hardly a surprise, Keiji thought, given how forgetful Bokuto was. And yet, the faintest feeling of guilt gnawed at him; for Bokuto usually only realised he had forgotten to ask when Keiji had pre-emptively sent him a reminder. And it had been raining on and off for most of the past fortnight, and Keiji, somehow, hadn’t even remembered about that once.

Which was mostly because he had been trying very hard to not think in the mornings, packing his things to go to practice. And not thinking meant he switched his phone off, so he wouldn’t be tempted to go on autopilot and text Komi to make sure he was awake, or to accept Sarukui or Shirofuku’s offers to meet him at the halfway point where their routes to school converged.

As Keiji blinked and reoriented himself with the present—outside a _combini_ , just quite literally ran into Bokuto, very, very wet—he found that Bokuto was still talking. And had started to walk.

And so he fell into pace with Bokuto’s walk and his chatter, doing his best to ignore the rain pounding down on his umbrella and Bokuto’s hair and the squelch of his sodden shoes and the unpleasant way his damp track bottoms rubbed against his thighs.

“Say, Akaashi,” Bokuto said after a while, when they were passing by a park close to the point where Keiji would head to his train station and Bokuto would continue to walk the rest of the way home.

“Mm?”

“Um…” Bokuto scratched the back of his head. His mouth was twisted in an odd sort of way, and a sudden sick swell swept through Keiji’s stomach. There was one thing—one large, looming thing—they hadn’t talked about. Normally, he would say the chances of it coming up were one in ten. One in a hundred.

But then, this was Bokuto, and Bokuto was always that one.

“How you feeling about Nationals?”

The sick feeling bubbled up, and Keiji swallowed it down hard. He found he couldn’t quite look Bokuto in the eye.

“We lost,” he said, with a tight shrug. “It’s over, we lost, you and the other third years aren’t coming to the club any more. There’s nothing else.”

But in his subconscious, he knew that wouldn’t be good enough for Bokuto, Bokuto for whom there was always something else, something bigger, some mountain he had yet to conquer and some wall he was determined to plough through at any cost.

And Bokuto stopped, right in the middle of the footpath, and there was no mistaking the look on his face now.

“You’re still mad about it, aren’t ya?”

Keiji forced himself to take a couple of breaths before speaking. “I’m not mad about it.”

“You are.”

“I am _not_ mad. It’s frustrating, but I’m over it.”

“No,” said Bokuto, taking a step closer. “You’re not.”

He let out a shallow laugh then, and looked at Keiji with dripping hair and sodden clothes and something in his face that was well beyond his years. It spoke of understanding without pity, eyes that had seen too much and learned more than they should, a firm set to a sympathetic mouth that he recognised instantly—

_the first time he ever thought, ah, that’s why he’ll be the captain_

—and Bokuto said, with a voice that rang of order, “Scream.”

Sometimes, Bokuto said things that were completely and utterly mad. Not his usual scatterbrained, just plain idiotic. This was one of those things.

“What?” Keiji said, uncaring of how vicious his voice came out. “I—what?”

Bokuto just stared at him, serious and sincere, and Keiji tightened his jaw. Of all the ridiculous things Bokuto said—

“I can’t just _scream_ , we are in _public_ , Bokuto-san—”

“Akaashi, you’re still angry about it! I—you—you’re allowed to be angry!” The rain was falling harder now, and the air split in a shock of white-blue lightning. In that instant, Bokuto’s eyes flashed, and Keijii’s hand tightened on his bag.

“But you can’t keep it all in here,” Bokuto said, slapping a hand over his chest. “It’s gonna eat you up until you can’t deal with it, and I don’t wanna see you like this. You shouldn’t have to be angry!”

“I’m not angry about it,” Keiji said. “We lost, and we could have done better, but it’s _over_ now, and we can’t do anything about it—”

“But you’re not over it!”

“Yes I am!”

“Are you? Can you get over _losing_ that quickly, Akaashi?”

He kept speaking, but the rain seemed to drown out his voice; or maybe it was the rip-roar of a tearing, fierce gush of something terrible roaring through his ears, a thing which spiralled down his throat and held it in a chokehold, which made his insides numb and hot all at the same time. There wasn’t anything else, just Bokuto’s voice getting louder and louder over a thunderclap, and his words ringing and rocketing through Keiji’s head.

_Can you get over losing?_

Get over it? Like it didn’t still hurt to remember sprinting and diving towards that last ball and everything he couldn’t do to stop it?

“—and I thought it was just exam stress but then, I thought, you never get stressed over that—”

Like it didn’t still hurt to remember watching the exact moment Komi’s face had crumpled and he had started to cry right there on the court?

“—so tense, and you haven’t wanted to have lunch with any of us, and we’re—”

Like it didn’t still hurt to remember how excited he had been from the moment they shook hands, how many times his brain and his teammates’ unwavering trust had caught the other team out, and how in the end they could have let seventy-five crappy serves go through for all the good it did them?

“—and goddammit Akaashi, we wanna be there for you if ya need us, but—”

Like it didn’t still hurt sometimes when he clenched his fingers, even though the bruises and swelling from too many spikes he hadn’t been able to block had faded days ago, those fingers that hadn’t been enough in their last futile attempt to give themselves one more set-up, one more point, one more scraping chance towards that final goal?

And Bokuto was still talking, voice rising by the second, and it was still raining, and that thing was burning up through his chest and throat and eyes, and Keiji clenched his fists.

“—hurting, I know you are, but you’re just gonna say you’re not, and that’s not the truth, it ain’t, but Akaashi—”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

Keiji squeezed his eyes tight as that terrible thing swept over him—the _anger_ , the _frustration_ , the _grief and guilt and loss_ —and rose, high and loud into the night.

“Shut up!”

“Akaashi?”

“Do you really think I didn’t feel it when we lost too, Bokuto-san? Could you ever believe for a second that I wasn’t hurting too?” He snapped open his eyes, to see Bokuto standing there. Proud, strong Bokuto, standing so tall and solid and bright in the rain—

And then he screamed, as hard as his throat and heart would let him.

“Of course I’m mad! I didn’t _want_ us to lose! We should have won in three sets, I knew we could win in three sets but we _didn’t_ and then we _lost_!”

Keiji could feel his shoulders clenching up around his neck and his chest closing up more close and brittle than he could ever want, but there was nothing he could do, nothing when everything, _everything_ , was being loosed into the night like this.

“I messed up!” He wrenched his head up, and stared Bokuto straight in the eyes. He had to hear this. He needed to hear this to his face, because it wasn’t Bokuto’s fault, he _knew_ it wasn’t Bokuto’s fault—

“I messed up, okay! I fucked up those tosses in the second set, and I _know_ — _don’t_ interrupt me! That’s _why_ you went into Dejected Mode, that’s _why_ we lost, that’s—I could have—I should have done better, but—” His throat hurt, and Bokuto looked shocked like he had never seen, but he couldn’t stop these feelings and thoughts that were spiralling out of his hands and into the night, out of control and beyond reach, because every single one of them was true and every single one he had been pressing away in a dark space he didn’t want to reach into.

But he had released them now, all at once, and he couldn’t stop until they had all gone.

“I should have stopped that last ball! I should have given you guys another chance, because we could have scored again! It was your last chance to win, and—and—and—I—”

His chest was heaving. His throat was stuck, and he couldn’t get air in or words out. All his face felt like pins and needles, and even though all the frustration and anger and vicious, horrid thoughts were out there except the last, he didn’t have breath or strength enough to voice it.

It was an awful feeling, but Keiji was certain he was going to start crying if he couldn’t start speaking again.

And then Bokuto stepped towards him, big, deliberate steps, and his hands lifted; and then he stopped, and looked Keiji in the eye. His mouth was at an uncertain tilt, but his eyes were huge and gentle.

Keiji gave him the barest of nods, and Bokuto’s hands landed on his shoulders. And then something came over Keiji. A great wash of fatigue, like he had felt before except stronger and more draining and altogether much more at once. Bokuto was close to him, very close. So close that Keiji imagined he could slump forwards to lean against Bokuto’s chest and barely lose his balance.

So he did. And a moment later, Bokuto’s hands left his shoulders, and he felt Bokuto’s arms wrap loosely around him in a hug.

Around him, it felt like the world had stopped. It was still, there in Bokuto’s arms; warm and enclosed and dark and very, very still. The rain was still pelting down on top of him, on top of them both, but Keiji suddenly found he didn’t care. It was like the whole rest of the world had been closed off from him, and there was only him and Bokuto and the hurt that had festered and clawed at him for so long.

When the tears came, he didn’t try to stifle them. He just pressed his face against Bokuto’s sopping blazer, and squeezed his eyes shut until they had passed.

He thought he felt Bokuto’s hand rub his back, just once.

It was hard to stop the crying quickly, and harder still to reach the point where his face wasn’t burning and he was sure his eyes wouldn’t well over again. But somehow, he kept himself upright, and no one asked him to be okay, and after some interminable time, Keiji found that his breathing came easier. And when he pushed himself back, Bokuto let go without a second of hesitation.

Somehow, Keiji almost wished Bokuto had held on that half-moment longer.

“I’d…” Keiji sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and started again. “I should be off. My… my train’ll be here—um—”

Bokuto had been chewing his lip between his teeth since Keiji had pulled away from him, fidgeting but quiet, but as Keiji tried to find the words to express a very clear, easy intent, even as his brain wouldn’t let him talk the way he wanted to, and even as he couldn’t meet Bokuto’s eyes, Bokuto spoke.

“D’ya… I—er—you gonna be okay going home by yourself?”

“I’ll—” Keiji cleared his throat, and started again, as something small and warm flooded through his chest like liquid caramel. “I’ll be fine. It’s not that far, and my mum’s at home.”

“You feelin’ okay?”

Keiji swallowed, and looked down at his chest as he thought. His throat hurt. He was sopping wet all over, and the chill of the winter night was starting to settle into his skin. His chest felt enormous and empty, and shrivelled and cowering all at once, but there was a great lightness to it. Where in the last days there had almost been a monster with clawed fingers clutching and squeezing at his shoulders and ribs and stomach and heart, there was nothing.

Bokuto was right. Screaming had helped. Letting it out and away, where someone else could catch him when he fell—

That had helped more than he could say.

“Better than I was,” Keiji said. And then, with a sideways glance, and much quieter: “Thank you.”

“Gotta make sure my kouhai’s alright. Still the captain, aren’t I?”

“Only ‘til the end of the month.”

“Hey, I’m always gonna be the captain! Well… kinda, I mean… I can still say I was?”

 _You can,_ Keiji thought, as they fell into step alongside one another again. Worn out and weighed down from his waterlogged clothes, Keiji found himself slowing down and slouching under the added pull of his bag. And yet, his heart and his mind were at ease for the first time in many days, as he kept his eyes on Bokuto, and smiled, a secret smile to himself.

_Of course you can say that, because you were the best captain I'll ever have._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos/comment if you enjoyed is always much appreciated!
> 
> [Tumblr](http://museicaliteacup.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/museicalitea)


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